Stylos is the blog of Jeff Riddle, a Reformed Baptist Pastor in North Garden, Virginia. The title "Stylos" is the Greek word for pillar. In 1 Timothy 3:15 Paul urges his readers to consider "how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar (stylos) and ground of the truth."

Tuesday, October 31, 2017

I was tutoring my boys in Latin on Monday morning. We usually
read a section of William Stearns Davis' A
Day in Old Rome (Allyn and Bacon, 1925, 1966) in each session. Yesterday’s
reading was on the wine drinking customs of the ancient Romans. I was struck by
this statement:

Common soldiers, slaves, and
plebeians of the lowest classes have a special beverage all their own, namely posca, which is simply vinegar mixed
with enough water to make it palatable. It probably forms a really refreshing
drink, if one can acquire the taste for it (p. 108).

A footnote adds:

Posca was
probably the drink in which the sponge was steeped, that was extended to Jesus
as He hung on the cross.

This then sent me back to the Gospel accounts:

Matthew 27:34 They gave him vinegar
to drink mingled with gall [oxos meta
choles memingmenon]: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.

Matthew 27:48 And straightway one of
them ran and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar [spongon, plesas te oxous], and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.

Mark 15:23 And they gave him to drink
wine mingled with myrrh [esmyrnismenon
oinon]: but he received it not.

Mark 15:36 And one ran and filled a
spunge, full of vinegar [gemisas spongon
oxouos] , and put it on a reed,
and gave him to drink, saying, Let alone; let us see whether Elias will come to
take him down (Mark 15:36).

Luke 23:36 And the soldiers also
mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar [oxos] (Luke 23:36).

John 19:29 Now there was set a vessel
full of vinegar [oxous meton]: and
they filled a spunge with vinegar [plesantes
spongon oxous], and put it upon
hyssop, and put it to his mouth. 30
When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar [to oxos], he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave
up the ghost.

Notes:

The offering of a vinegar drink (Greek to oxos, perhaps indeed, the posca
mentioned by Davis) to Jesus at his crucifixion is mentioned in all four Gospels.
It is multiply attested.

Matthew and Mark are unique in that they mention two offerings
and in their note of his refusal at the first offering. It is not implausible,
however, to harmonize these with the other accounts.

John notes the offering was just before his final statement, “It
is finished” and death.

Though noting the similarities in the accounts above, it should
also be recognized that each account is unique. The closest parallels are
between Matthew and Mark. Still, even the language of Matthew and Mark differ. Luke’s
is the most minimal. This argues against the idea of literary dependence among
the Gospels and toward independent development based on common tradition.

1.We see in his healing of the nobleman's son the power of Christ to do as he pleases.

He does not have to be physically present, but he can work
his power in men’s lives from a distance. This is especially true now in this
age, when he is at the Father’s right hand. We can come to him with boldness,
knowing his power.

2.Though Christ can do as he wishes, we should not
presume to make his performance of miracles some kind of condition for our
belief.

This was the rebuke given to his skeptics in v. 48 when Jesus
said to his hearers, “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.”

We are not to attempt to try to straightjacket the Lord with
some kind of conditional faith. If you do this for me, then I will do that for
you. He does not work that way.

3.Like this nobleman, we should seek the Lord on
behalf of the needs of our children and our loved ones.

We should not only intercede in prayer for their physical
needs but, more importantly, for their spiritual needs.

What will it profit them if they gain the whole world but
lose their souls?

4.As with the nobleman, the Lord may use
difficulties and adverse circumstances, like the grave illness of a child, to
draw us to himself and to cry out to him.

Calvin notes that this man was humbled by the dread of losing
his son, adding:

We find the same thing in ourselves, for we are astonishingly
delicate, impatient, and fretful until subdued by adversities, we are
constrained to lay aside our pride and disdain.

5.We must trust that Christ will do what he has
promised even when we do not see immediate evidence of it.

This is the essence of faith, “the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

We may not see immediate answers to our prayers or petitions
for healings that take place in this life, but we must not abandon faith in
Christ.

6.We may recognize evidences of God’s word
fulfilled when they are made apparent to us and praise him for them.

Such evidences are not the basis for our faith, but they do
make it deeper.

7.We are to pray that the Lord would work
throughout our whole household.

Calvin says of the nobleman after he came to faith:

His whole family joins him, which was an evidence of miracle;
nor can it be doubted that he did his utmost to bring others along with him to
embrace the Christian religion.

We saw in the Samaritan woman a model of evangelism, of
witness and invitation. Here is another kind of evangelism: that within
households. What father will not so pity his children that he will not go to
Christ daily for them and say, “Sir, come down ere my child die” (v. 49)?

Thursday, October 26, 2017

I’ve been using Irving Hexham’s Understanding World Religions: An Interdisciplinary Approach
(Zondervan, 2011) in teaching a Religions of the World class this semester. In
the chapter on Christianity, Hexham begins by sketching the canonical Gospel
accounts of the life of Jesus. After noting the traditional view that the
Gospels relied on eyewitness testimony, Hexham states:

… it was also generally assumed,
although seldom explicitly stated except by members of the Eastern Orthodox
community, that Jesus spoke and taught Greek (328).

He adds:

Then, in the eighteenth century, the
German scholar Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) suggested that in
reality Jesus must have spoken Aramaic (328).

Herder’s suggestion was widely
accepted, and now it has become the received wisdom that Jesus taught in
Aramaic, necessitating the translation of his words into Greek by the gospel
writers (329).

He suggests this new “Jesus spoke Aramaic” theory created
a problem for the traditional understanding of the Gospels, because so many of
the quotations from Jesus in the Gospels use identical words. Hexham said it
was suggested that if Jesus spoke Aramaic and the Gospel writers independently
translated his words into Greek, it would be unlikely that the quotations would
be so exact. This led to the theories of literary dependence among the Gospels,
suggesting that they either borrowed from a common source and/or from each
other.

Hexham concludes:

On the other hand, if Jesus spoke
Greek, as earlier commentators assumed, and as the Greek Orthodox Church still
maintains, these passages are easily explained as exact quotations from Jesus
(329).

I find these observations intriguing. I have assumed that
Jesus spoke Aramaic based on the Aramaic citations in Matthew and Mark. I was
not aware of the Eastern Orthodox position was that Jesus spoke Greek or of Herder’s
suggested role in tipping the balance to Aramaic. Hexham’s point on how this
shift contributed to the rise of source criticism of the Gospels also makes
sense. I’d like to study more on this….

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

As part of preparation to teach on the topic “Canon and
Reformation” at Redeeming Grace BC in Matthews, Virginia this weekend, I’ve been
reading over the opening to William Whitaker’s A Disputation on Holy Scriptures (Soli Deo Gloria reprint, original
1588, English translation, 1849). In the Preface, Whitaker notes his choice of
weapon in his polemics:

Our arms shall be the sacred scriptures,
that sword and shield of the word, that tower of David, upon which a thousand
bucklers hang, and all the armour of the mighty, the sling and the pebbles of
the brook wherewith David stretched upon the ground that gigantic and haughty
Philistine. Human reasonings and testimonies, if one use them too much or out of place, are
like the armour of Saul, which was so far from helping David that it rather
unfitted him for the conflict (p. 19).

Monday, October 23, 2017

We enjoyed CRBC's first annual Fall Family Camp last Thursday-Saturday, October 19-21 at Machen Conference Center in Highland County, Virginia. I'm still sore from kickball, wiffle ball, hiking, blog tag, volleyball, touch football, etc. We also did a study of the Five Solas of the Reformation. Here are a few scenes from the camp:

Thursday, October 19, 2017

But he said to them, I
have meat to eat that ye know not of (John 4:32).

What is it that drove the Lord Jesus in his earthly life? What
moved him? What motivated him? It was to do the will of the Father who sent him
(cf. John 3:16-17).

This is perhaps best epitomized in his prayer in the garden:
“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless, not my
will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).

What fed, what satisfied the Lord Jesus Christ? Doing the will of
the Father. We speak of both the active and the passive obedience of Christ.
His will was in perfect sync with the Father’s so that he might fill in all the
inadequacies of our imperfect adherence to the Father’s will.

Specific insight into Christ’s doing the will of the Father, as
applied to this situation, is revealed in John 6:

John 6:38 For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but
the will of him that sent me. 39 And this is the Father’s will which hath sent
me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise
it up again at the last day. 40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that
everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on him, may have everlasting life:
and I will raise him up at the last day.

The point is that in talking to the Samaritan woman at the well
about the living water he had partaken of a more satisfying food: capturing the
heart of one of God’s elect!

In
light of Christ’s example, consider now what it is that drives you. Is it to do
the will of the Father? Is it to be used as part of the means to bring others
to Christ whether by preaching (for officers) or by witness and invitation (all
God’s people)? Is it the simple satisfaction of living the Christian life? On
one hand we need to remember that we are not Christ and can never be like him.
On the other hand, we need to recognize that he lived his life as a model for
what ours should be. And one day by God’s grace we will be conformed to his
image. To what end do you live?

Brethren,
we have a food to satisfy us that other men know not of. Let us be driven by
this and not by lesser things.

Tuesday, October 17, 2017

The 2017 Keach Conference was held Friday-Saturday, September 29-30 at Covenant RBC in Warrenton, Va. I was given the task again this year of a giving an "orientation" to our meeting at the start of the conference. Here are my notes from this year's orientation.

Orientation to the Keach Conference

September 29, 2017

Dear brethren,

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Great
Shepherd of the Sheep.

I am Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in
Louisa, Virginia, and I have been given the task again this year of extending a
warm welcome to you on behalf of the Reformed Baptist Fellowship of Virginia and
of offering an orientation to the annual Keach Conference.

This is the sixteenth consecutive fall season in which a
group of believers, church members and officers, from various congregations
across the Old Dominion and beyond, have gathered to enjoy edifying fellowship
and conversation and to hear concentrated doctrinal teaching and preaching on
the most precious faith “once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).

During these years we have met in various locations across
the commonwealth, from Virginia Beach (FBC, Virginia Beach, in our first
meeting), to Northern Virginia (Good News Baptist Church, Alexandria), to Richmond
(All Saints Presbyterian Church), to Harrisonburg (Providence BC, last year).

Our meetings have included various participants over the
years. Some have attended only once or twice. Others have become regular
fixtures. Some have never been able to attend in person but have faithfully
listened to the messages online (last year’s messages alone have received
around a thousand collective downloads).

In the early years, we called our gathering the “Evangelical
Forum,” reflecting our desire to rekindle interest in the Biblical evangelion, or gospel. Eventually, our
interest became more defined as we moved from focus on soteriological Calvinism
to a more full-orbed, Reformed, confessional Christianity.

One evidence of this shift (one might even call it growth or
maturity) is the fact that eleven years ago (in 2007) we decided to make the
theme of our conference a consecutive chapter by chapter study of the Second
London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689). Thus, last year our conference theme
was “Of Effectual Calling” (chapter ten).

Another evidence of this shift, was the fact that we changed
the name of the conference in 2010 from “Evangelical Forum” to the “Keach
Conference,” calling the meeting after the influential English Particular
Baptist minister Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), a man who had suffered public
pillory for his preaching of credo-baptism, one of those present at the
assembly which adopted the Second London Baptist Confession, and the only
Baptist whose profile was included in Joel Beeke and Randal J. Pederson’s book Meet the Puritans.

We have been blessed over the years with some outstanding and
gifted speakers who have agree to come to our humble gathering, often at little
compensation other than covering their travel costs. This has included men like
Greg Barkman (Scripture; Beacon Baptist Church), Joseph Pipa (God; Greenville
Presbyterian Seminary), Derek Thomas (God’s decree; then at Reformed
Theological Seminary in Jackson, Miss), David Murray (Creation, Puritan
Theological Seminary); Joel Beeke (Providence, Puritan Theological Seminary), Malcolm
Watts (Providence, Emmanuel Church, Salisbury, England), and Jim Savastio (Of
Christ the Mediator, RBC-Louisville), to name but a few. We have also been
blessed to hear gifted pastors from Virginia, including Lloyd Sprinkle, Bryan
Wheeler, and Steve Clevenger (again, just to mention a few).

With regard to respected and able speakers, this year’s
conference is no exception as we welcome Pastor Poh Boon Sing of the Damansara
RBC of Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, along with his wife Goody. Pastor Poh will be
introduced later, but let me say something about our speaker at this point, if
I may.

In 2015 I had the privilege of visiting Pastor Poh, staying
in his home, located above the church meeting hall, and speaking in an annual
theology conference hosted by his church for Reformed ministers and local
church members (we might call it their “Keach Conference”). Delegates attended
from various places in southeast Asia and beyond (from Malaysia, Nepal,
Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Pakistan). In that visit, I got
to see first-hand the ongoing ministry and fruit of Pastor Poh’s labors within
his own church and beyond, where he serves as a sort of Baptist “bishop” (I
know that’s not part of our ecclesiology; ok, let’s call it “mentor”). I saw and heard, in particular, the wide range
of Pastor Poh’s labors in the vineyard, as I watched him move, with ease and
competence, from capably explaining complicated doctrinal topics to eager
theological students, to preaching the simple gospel to scores of Nepali
migrant workers, gathered in a single crowded room (we would call it a
“flop-house”) or to Indonesian construction workers living in what we would
call make-shift slums.

Pastor Poh is, in fact, a recognized expert in the field of
both English Particular Baptist historical theology and in Reformed Baptist ecclesiology,
the doctrine of the church. We are honored to have him here.

In light of this year’s speaker, I want to point out one
change to our program and I want to suggest another change:

First, let me point out a change we’ve already made in the
program:

According to our previously adopted thematic plan, this year
we would have been looking at chapter 11, Of Justification. This certainly
might have been very fitting given that this year marks the 500th
anniversary of the Protestant Reformation (October 31, 1517-2017). When we
discovered that we might be able to have Pastor Poh come to speak at the
conference this year, however, we decided that though we might have had him
address chapter 11, it would only be fitting if we skipped ahead to chapter 26,
Of the church. Rest assured, next year we will return to chapter 11.

Pastor Poh, no doubt, will be quick to acknowledge that he is
first and foremost a student of Scripture and that good and sincere men and
churches might not always agree completely in their views on church government.
As our confession acknowledges in chapter one, paragraph 6, “there are some
circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the church,
common to all human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light
of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word,
which are always to be observed.”

We look forward to this opportunity to listen to and learn
from a man who has given much time and attention to this topic.

Second, let me suggest a change.

If you have read Pastor Poh’s important 2013 study A Garden Enclosed: A historical study and
evaluation of the form of church government practiced by Particular Baptists in
the 17th and 18th centuries, you know that he
suggests that Benjamin Keach and, later, John Gill were primarily responsible
for what he believes to be an infelicitous departure from the Independent church
government model of John Owen which had been adopted by the first generation of
Reformed (Particular) Baptists.

According to Poh, Keach was only a “second
generation leader” (A Garden Enclosed,
p. 126), a “controversial figure” (p. 168), who relished being “engaged in all
controversies” (p. 176). He was “a
prickly, rash, and independent-minded personality” (p. 176). He held to a “mixed theology” and often
straddled the line between the General and Particular Baptists, on various
issues (p. 206). Among Particular
Baptists, he was a “virtual loner” (p. 220).

Poh’s hero, on the other hand, is Hanserd
Knollys [pronounced Knowles] (1599-1691), one of the few early Baptist pastors
with a university education. He suggests that Knollys was “most influential
among the Particular Baptists,” and he can even speak of his influence as “the
Knollys’ factor” (p. 180). He further
suggests that Knollys’ influence has been unjustly downplayed by more recent
Baptist historians. In truth, Poh
argues, “[William] Kiffin was the Hermes and Knollys the Zeus of the Particular
Baptist community” (p. 183). Of the
three so-called “mighty men” among early Baptists (Knollys, Kiffin, and Keach),
“Knollys was chief of the three” (p. 183).

In light of these convictions and in deference
to our speaker, I suggest that we refer to our 2017 conference as the Knollys
conference, rather than the Keach Conference (but that, for the sake of
consistency, we go back to Keach next year).

So, welcome to the 2017 Knollys conference! May the Lord richly bless and encourage us as we meet together and learn about his
church, which he himself founded upon Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ!”
and against which, as Christ has promised, the gates of hell shall not prevail.

Monday, October 16, 2017

I’ve been reading Calvin’s commentary on John as I preach
expositionally through the Fourth Gospel. In those sermons I only get to refer
to a fraction of the Geneva master’s insights. One overlooked comment from
recent sermons on John 4 was Calvin’s contrast of the woman at the well’s
simple trust in Christ (turning from the corruption of Samaritan religion) with
that of “Papists” and “Mahometans” in his remarks on John 4:25:

I wish that those who now boast of
being the pillars of the Christian Church, would at least imitate this poor
woman, so as to be satisfied by the simple doctrine of Christ, rather than
claim I know not what power of superintendence for putting forth their
inventions. For whence was the religion of the Pope and Mahomet collected but
from the wicked additions, by which they imagined that they brought the
doctrine of the Gospel to a state of perfection? As if it would have been
incomplete without such fooleries. But whoever shall be well taught in the
school of Christ will ask no other instructors, and indeed will not receive
them.

….There is, therefore, no danger that
he will disappoint one of those whom he finds ready to become his disciples.
But they who refuse to submit to him, as we see done by many haughty and
irreligious men, or who hope to find elsewhere a wisdom more perfect—as the
Mahometans and Papists do—deserve to be driven about by innumerable
enchantments, and at length to be plunged in an abyss of errors….

Notice that Calvin sees the problem with both groups to be
their tendency to make “wicked additions” to Scripture in order to bring it to “perfection.”
For Calvin, the Scriptures are sufficient and complete as they are.

Saturday, October 14, 2017

Image: Views of the St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery complex, Kiev, Ukraine, August 2017.

This summer I visited the St. Michael Golden-Domed Monastery
in Kiev, Ukraine. The vivid sky-blue facades and the glistening domes are a
distinctive landmark on the slopes of the Dnieper River. To our surprise,
however, we discovered that though the current impressive structures do indeed
stand on a traditional Orthodox monastic site that dates back to 989 AD (and
before the advent of Christianity, it had been a site of pagan worship), the
current main building, reconstructed in the thirteenth century
Ukranian Baroque style, was only completed in December 1999. It is, in fact, a nearly
brand new building (albeit on ancient foundations) made to look old!

While there I picked a guidebook which I partly read as we
toured the grounds and only fully read last week. The guidebook was originally
written in Ukrainian and later translated into readable but slightly imperfect
English.

The book explains the “period of decline and destruction”
that happened under communism (pp. 34-35).

This story began with Bolshevik bombing of Kiev’s landmark
churches January 17-26, 1918. “Seven heavy shells hit St. Michael’s Cathedral,”
which “smashed one of the central arches, which kept the dome.”

When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1919 “the monastery
buildings were transferred to other ‘owners.’” The guidebook author notes that
the nationalization of the monastery was, in fact, “folly embezzlement of
property” and that there was a veritable “scramble for it among the various
Soviet institutions.”

He adds:

In 1922 all residential buildings of
the monastery were turned into dormitories for students at Kyiv high schools.
After removing domes and the cross of the Refectory Church, and whitening the
paintings [I assume this means painting over the church’s artwork and icons], a
dining room was placed here. In the monastery was the Institute of Red
professors, editors of several newspapers, and magazines, and various research
institutions.

This was not the end, however, of the communist effort to
erase the Ukranian and Orthodox Christian heritage represented by the monastic
complex:

In 1934-1935 they quietly dismantled
St. Basil (Three consecrators) church, and when it came to the Monastery, the
public began to sound the alarm. The Cathedral was offered to eliminate on the
grounds that it had no special historical or aesthetic value, as it had been in
the Baroque style.

It continues:

During 1934-1936 a bell-tower, most
of the wall to the economic gate, the Bishop’s house, all commercial buildings
of the court were dismantled. In the Spring of 1935 the Bolsheviks began to
strip the church: the golden leaves of copper from the domes was removed, a
silver sanctum of St. Barbara was given for melting, the baroque iconostasis
was destroyed. The Cathedral was destroyed on August 14, 1937 at 9 pm.

Take note of that last line. The building had to be torn down
in darkness for fear of the people’s reaction. One is reminded of Orwell’s
depiction in 1984 of a socialist state,
bent on secretly erasing history for the “good” of the people.

The account ends with Psalm 137-esque codicil:

History teaches that abuse of the
Holy Temple of God does not pass with impunity, but the eyes of the destroyers
were blinded. Most of the party functionaries, who had decided the fate of the
cathedral –P. Postyshev, V. Balytskiy, V. Zatonsky, J. Pysmenny, G. Bordon—were
shot by their accomplices in 1937-1938. The Head of People’s Commissars of
Ukraine committed suicide. S. Kosoir was shot, the same fate befell the the
head of Kyiv City Council R. Petrushansky.

The apostle Paul’s citation of the Scriptures in Romans
12:19: “for as it is written, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord'”
comes to mind.

I was struck by this account not because of any perceived
inherent spiritual importance in St. Michael’s physical structures per se. Though I can
appreciate the aesthetics of the buildings, as a good Particular Baptist I
stand by our confession’s statement that “Neither prayer nor any other part of
religious worship, is now under the gospel, tied unto, or made more acceptable
by any place in which it is performed, or toward which it is directed; but God
is to be worshiped everywhere in spirit and in truth….” (Chapter 22 “Of
Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day,” paragraph 6). I was struck, rather, by what it
says about the conflict between the socialist state and symbols of religion,
history, and nation. Even when suppressed, at least in Ukraine, they seem to
have come back.

Friday, October 13, 2017

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and
in truth (John 4:24).

The conversation with the Samaritan
woman at the well continues in v. 24 as Jesus announces the spirituality of
God: God is a Spirit.

This verse is a key prooftext in
chapter 2, paragraph 1 of our Second London Baptist confession which affirms
that God is “a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions.”

Contrary to the ancient pagan religions which
saw the gods as creaturely beings, and contrary to modern religions, like
Mormonism, which claim that God has “a body of flesh and bones” as we do, Jesus
says that God is a Spirit.

What about the incarnation, the Word
made flesh? Does not the second person of the Godhead, even now, inhabit a
resurrection body? Yes, but remember Christ is one person with two natures,
fully God and fully man. With respect to his humanity he has a body, but this,
in no way, invalidates the truth that God the Father is a Spirit.

Jesus reiterates the point made in v.
23: that God is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Worship is spiritual.
The focus in worship is not in the physical. There are no “holy places.” God
can be worshipped in a church meeting house, or in a storefront, or in a field.
We do not need the props of external stimuli to worship God. In fact, such
things might well mislead.

Worship is also in truth. That is, it
is guided by true belief, true doctrine. The standard for true worship is not
sincerity. One can be very sincere about false beliefs. What matters is truth.
God is not only honored but also glorified, rightly worshipped, when his people
embrace his truth. God is glorified by orthodoxy.